Skepticism from a Godless Conservative

Atheism is Just That and Nothing More

I really don’t understand how people cannot seem to understand atheism.

I’m referring to an article that is on Salon.com today. I noticed there were several comments by people I follow about this article, so after perusing the article, I thought I might want to be more specific in what being an atheist actually means.

It means a non-belief in god(s). that’s it. I know, I’m probably going to get some pushback as being a dictionary atheist, but when heads are pulled out of the sand for even a moment, that’s all being an atheist refers to.

Being an atheist does not imply humanism.
Being an atheist does not imply working for social justice.
Being an atheist does not imply being skeptical – except on one subject.

A humanist is not necessarily an atheist. Nor is someone that works for social justice (Martin Luther King, Jr., anyone?).

So to include these social constructs into the definition of “atheism” is absurd. It’s also ridiculous to even say in the article that “More and more, the strongest atheist voices are talking about nonbelief less as an end in itself, but as part of a larger conversation about social justice.”

Bullshit. That’s the nicest thing I can say about that sentence. I wonder where that comes from? Oh yeah…

Of course, the only voice added to the conversation is…David Silverman – president of American Atheists. Uhhh, no. Wait, It must be other well known atheists then. You know, like the ones the author took time out to disparage. Nope.

It’s one of The Usual Suspects. Someone that really craves a leadership voice in what in the article is called “the movement”. So, instead of being accused of taking Ms. Christina out of context, here’s her full quote:

“[T]he movement has become much more diverse — not just in the obvious ways of gender, race, and so on, but simply in terms of how many viewpoints are coming to the table. The sheer number of people who are seen in some way as leaders… has gone up significantly…. And the increasing diversity in gender, race, class, and so on are important. We have a long way to go in this regard, but we’re doing much, much better than we were. And that’s showing up in our leadership. It’s absurd to see Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris as representing all organized atheism — it always was a little absurd, but it’s seriously absurd now.”

First of all, name the “leaders” of atheism. Sure there are organizations that have leadership that are diverse, but are any of these people “leaders” in atheism? As far as her comments about diversity, I can tell you from personal experience, that I have always known atheists of different races, genders, class. It’s just that now, in my opinion, it’s less and less an issue for people to “come out” as an atheist.

The last sentence is gold though how she mentions that it looks absurd and basically always has been to view Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris (I wonder what happened to Dennett?) as representing atheism? Who ever said that? No axes to grind here are there?

Finally, what I noticed was the author is a fellow writer of Ms.Christina’s at Alternet. Now I understand.